With the immediate threat over, I took stock of my situation.

  Past-me had not, in fact, healed me with nothing. My status showed a level gain from all the slaughter, and past-me had invested five skill points into evolving [Heal] into [Major Heal]. He'd also boosted my Constitution further, and it amused me somewhat to find that he'd rounded out the invested points to a round three-hundred. Apparently, that was a trait we shared.

  ... Not that sharing traits was surprising, given that we were the same person. Unfortunately, I couldn't refute his assertion that given the same set of experiences, I'd have turned out the same way.

  There was also the fact that I hadn't moved. At the point of waking, I was lying exactly where I'd fallen unconscious, my active warding stone still on the ground by my side.

  I was starting to doubt the effectiveness of that little crystal... Yes, the barrier had saved my life, once, but when it came to keeping monsters away, thus far it had a rather poor track record.

  Anyway, my lack of movement implied that past-me had killed everything that approached without even moving. Unless he got up, killed things, then lay back down again, but that would be a bit weird. Once again, I had no idea how he'd killed things. There were no visible wounds on either braccus tyrant, so it obviously hadn't been with [Lightning Strike] or [Wind Scythe].

  In fact, none of the corpses had visible wounds. Perhaps last time he'd experimented somewhat, or played around, whereas this time he went for simply making everything dead as quickly and efficiently as possible. If he'd wanted skill points in a hurry to get [Major Heal], it made sense, although why he needed [Major Heal] when he obviously didn't need Skills to cast spells, I didn't know.

  And then there was the fact that he'd scared off monsters. The braccus raptors might have sufficient intelligence to plan and bide their time, but that didn't mean they should run away. Not unless they had some plan for coming back, which was, admittedly, a possibility. Perhaps it was the warding stone preventing them from seeing me as 'human'? But then why did the monsters approach in the first place?

  Oh, was that it? If past-me had needed [Major Heal], but hadn't had the skill points for it, had he deliberately attracted the monsters? And once we swapped back, whatever he was doing to pull them to him ceased? It was another possibility, but without asking him, I wouldn't know for sure.

  The sky was still light, even if the sun was approaching the horizon, so I apparently hadn't slept all that long. It was only evening. Given that I was surrounded by corpses, it probably wasn't a great location to spend the night. I'd move on, find somewhere a little less graveyard-ish, and camp there until the sun came back up. Whether I'd risk sleeping remained to be seen... Past-me obviously had a vested interest in keeping 'his' body alive, but he certainly didn't want 'me'. Sleeping was a risk, albeit one I couldn't put off forever. Even if my rocketing Constitution meant that technically I could make it from here to the tower in one go, that didn't factor in the amount of time it would take me to find the damn thing.

  Decision made, I stored the warding stone and hopped to my feet, marvelling at how light I felt. My Stats had shot up over the past week, and I was really feeling it. If I came out of the jungle alive—and as 'Robin', rather than the 'Seeker'—I might be able to sit in the same playing field as the likes of the Enshrouded and the Fatal Breeze.

  That was, alas, a big 'if', and the first sign that fate was toying with me came moments after I started moving, with [Sixth Sense] telling me... something.

  I had very little experience with the Skill, nor with its predecessors. [Danger Sense] had, at least, been fairly obvious when it pinged, letting me know I was in imminent danger. [Sixth Sense] was more. It was still geared toward danger, but the scope had expanded. From my experience with the worm, I'd felt out the way it not only let me know when doing nothing would be dangerous, but if an action was unable to mitigate that danger. I'd known that running away wouldn't help, and so had let myself get deliberately slapped by a braccus tyrant to get myself out of range.

  It had also let me know that getting tail-smacked by a house-sized dinosaur was dangerous, but frankly, I hadn't needed the aid of a Skill to know that.

  What it didn't tell me was what the danger was. I'd extrapolated the imminent arrival of a colossal worm from the level and breadth of danger. Now it was telling me that there was another threat around, but... not immediate danger? Something that would become a threat, perhaps?

  I needed to practise using the Skill. Not in terms of stages, or even evolving it, but getting used to processing, comprehending, and reacting to its feedback. I had the feeling that the Skill was pretty much the human version of what the orc chieftains had used, and they'd been terrifying to face in melee combat, despite my [Dagger Mastery] making me the technically superior fighter.

  ... The first orc chieftain had also shown a rather terrifying ability to detect me watching him.

  Was that what I was feeling? The first time, I hadn't been planning to attack the orc, at least not right there and then. I'd been on a scouting mission, planning to report back and bring the entire team in. I was hostile, but not an immediate threat.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Damn. Was something following me? [Expert Stealth] hadn't given any feedback of being broken, but it never did when the person or monster doing the breaking were themselves hidden.

  Braccus raptors again? They'd pulled this stunt before, tracking me and attacking while I slept, but I hadn't had [Sixth Sense] back then. Perhaps they were the very same ones that had run away terrified when I'd woken up. Maybe the hostility had kicked back in once I'd deactivated the warding stone, and it would explain how it started the moment I began moving.

  Well, if they were waiting for me to sleep, how would they react if I didn't?

  But getting this far already involved a chain of extrapolation and guesswork. Too many perhapses and maybes. I didn't know something was following me, and even if something was, I didn't know what. For all I knew, it could be an agent of the kingdom sent to ensure my safety. Or an agent of the Empire, sent to ensure my lack thereof.

  All I could do was get to the tower as soon as possible.

  Thanks to the distraction provided by my potential pursuit, I failed to notice that the sun had sunk to the horizon. The canopy prevented any view of the sky, casting the ground into shadow even at midday, but the position of the sun was still clearly visible from the glints on leaves, or the occasional beam piercing through a small gap as branches swayed in the light breeze. Now they were gone, the land not yet fallen completely into darkness, but there was a definite deepening of shadow. And yet I hadn't noticed.

  At last it occurred to me that if Constitution meant I didn't need to sleep through the night, [Mana Mastery] meant that I didn't need to stop.

  Despite the lack of light, I could still 'see'.

  There was no need to wait out the hours of darkness, because to me, there was no darkness. It wasn't like I needed to use a lamp, which would draw monsters to me like... well, like acid moths to the flame. I could navigate using nothing but the mana intrinsic to living things.

  Any pursuers of mine were going to find themselves sorely disappointed.

  Even if there was something pursuing me, I could at least comfort myself with the knowledge that there could quite possibly be more. Alas, the experience for dodging enemies had grown rather pathetic compared to the experience of killing them. Even assassination experience was a pittance compared to the gain from killing C and B-rank monsters. Not that I'd be assassinating B-rank monsters for a long while yet.

  For hours I continued on without incident, earning a trickle more stealth experience, and all the while [Sixth Sense] didn't stop. There were one or two near misses, such as rounding a tree and coming face-to-face with the head of a braccus tyrant, fast asleep, curled around a tree. If I did want to score my first assassination of a B-rank monster, that would have been a great opportunity, but I really didn't have anything I could assassinate one with. Even caught sleeping, I wouldn't be able to take it out quietly or quickly, so I carefully slunk away.

  With [Mapping], I could tell I was, on average, going in a straight line—I obviously couldn't keep it completely straight with all the trees in the way, and I was rather glad the landscape was flat, because there would be nothing like a cliff edge or giant ravine to throw off my path. I also knew I was heading in approximately the correct direction. It was hard to estimate how far I needed to go, though, and I really didn't want to miss it and travel twice as deep into the jungle as I needed to.

  How long had I been flying in the dream? And at what speed? It was impossible to know without doing some careful measurements of the sizes of trees and such, but my Reasoning pointed out that even without knowing exact distances or times, I could still work out ratios, and that I'd travelled almost the required distance. It was time to change strategy and begin a proper search.

  My range expanded slightly, but I still couldn't pick up any trace of the path I'd taken in the dream. Then there was nothing for it. I'd just need to search an ever-expanding spiral until I found something.

  I switched direction, curving to the right as I began my search for the hidden tower, hoping [Mapping] and the dream experience would be enough. Just how well was it hidden? The clearing had been huge, easily big enough to fit a village, so my spiral wouldn't need to be very tight to hit it were it not for the illusion and mental effects. Would the illusion interfere with [Mapping] and make me think I'd cleared an area despite leaving a mile-wide hole in the middle? Would I be able to penetrate the fear effect even if I found it?

  The feedback from [Sixth Sense] changed, but not in the way I'd expected. The low-level background feedback that not all was right with the world didn't multiply or suddenly turn urgent as a horde of raptors burst from between the trees, which was how I'd thought this would end. Instead, the feedback vanished completely.

  I frowned as I quickly dismissed the message. I'd had rewards for escaping pursuit before, and they weren't worded like that. That came from a monster that hadn't been aware of my presence to start with.

  I couldn't imagine whatever had been tracking me had simply given up. The more likely explanation was that something else had just killed it, and yet I'd heard or seen nothing. My tail had presumably stuck fairly close to keep [Sixth Sense] pinging, and another monster must have come nearby to grant me evasion experience, and yet there were no signs of either.

  Apparently I wasn't the only thing nearby acting stealthily, and I had a search to conduct in the area. I couldn't just leave.

  Which of us would discover the other first?

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